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SCHOOL

CAN THE MICROSCOPIC RANCHING TOWN OF RAPELJE, MONTANA

SPIRIT FIND SALVATION IN MOUNTAIN BIKING?

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY AARON TEASDALE

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SCHOOL SPIRIT R APELJE , M ONTANA , population 61, is that it’s a prairie dog’s whisker away from becoming a ghost town. Drought records set in the Dust Bowl era of the1930s are being shattered. Ranchers are selling off the herds of cattle they—and the prairie—can’t afford to feed. The soil has yielded meager crops the last three years. In this world of wheat farms and livestock ranches, honest handshakes and dusty boots, livelihoods are drying up—literally.

T

HE HARD TRUTH ABOUT

THE PEOPLE OF RAPELJE ARE BANDING TOGETHER TO SAVE THEIR TOWN, AND GETTING CREATIVE IN THE PROCESS. FIRST CAME THE NOW-ANNUAL RAPELJE GOPHER DERBY, OR PRAIRIE-DOG HUNTING COMPETITION, IN 1999.

NEXT WAS THE PASTURE GOLF TOURNAMENT.

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Mike who sat down one day and decided they were going to do everything in their power to save their hometown. It was Cork who listened to a couple at the pasture golf tournament suggest cyclists would enjoy trundling around Rapelje’s vast environs. It was Cork who wasted no time in visiting The Spoke Shop in Billings to enlist support. It was Cork who had Rapelje hosting its first bike race a mere three weeks later.

Chris Veit is a gregarious 33-year-old bike mechanic with pierced ears and boomerang sideburns. He’s the first person Cork met at the Spoke Shop. It was a fortuitous meeting for both men. Cork invited Chris, a sometime race organizer, to dinner, during which he and Mike peppered Chris with questions: “What is a mountain biker? Would they like our land?

Could we host a race?” Chris, acutely aware of Billings losing much of its best trail to sprawl, and eager for new riding vistas, convinced them to give it a shot.

It was up to the Erfles, however, to convince the rest of Rapelje. In morning conversations over coffee at the Stockman, Cork admits, “People kind of chuckled at first.” But Chris and his Spoke Shop coworkers were enthusiastic.

The Erfles set a date for a race, and, Cork explains, “People said ‘Well, why don’t we give it a try? Farming sure ain’t working for a darn.’”

The first-annual Rapelje 100k, held on October 14 of 2000, converted local skeptics when it attracted 40 paying riders and another two-dozen spectators. Chris spent that winter exploring Cork’s land, building relationships with neighboring ranchers and laying out a course for something even the most enthusiastic Rapeljean couldn’t make sense of: a 24-hour race. Meanwhile California-based bike maker Specialized caught wind of what was happening and came forward with a $1,000 grant. Soon, nearly every local rancher and farmer opened their land to cyclists.

Cork’s goal is simple: Save the Rockets. The town’s K-12 Rapelje School, home of ▲

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A promising agricultural town in the early part of the 20th century, Rapelje grew from the region’s sprawling ranches and formed a bustling nucleus for a rush of eager homesteaders. A school was built, a newspaper founded and, by the 1920s, an estimated 300 people called Rapelje home. The town itself sits square in the center of sparsely populated Lake Basin, a wideopen, virtually treeless grassland defined to the north and south by 400-foot sandstone escarpments. While “Lake Basin” may have once been an accurate name now “Giant-Chalk-WhiteAlkali-Blotch-With-A-Puddle-In-The-Middle Basin” would be a more appropriate one.

Rapelje would follow in the footsteps of so many rural West towns, which are dying a slow and dispiriting death, but instead, something remarkable is happening here: With unprecedented entrepreneurship and invention, the people of Rapelje are banding together to save their town, and getting creative in the process.

First came the now-annual Rapelje Gopher Derby, or prairie-dog hunting competition, in 1999. Next was the Pasture Golf Tournament, with toilet bowls as holes. Then this enterprising and uniquely open-minded community discovered mountain biking, and on June 8, 2001, this writer found himself traveling to a nowhere pocket of eastern Montana for the inaugural 24 Hours of Rapelje mountain bike race to ask the question: Can mountain biking save a town?

Amid the derelict buildings that once comprised downtown sits the one-story, metalroofed Stockman Café—a volunteer-run restaurant/senior center/community center and Rapelje’s lone retail outpost. Inside, Wayne “Cork” Erfle, Mike Erfle and Chris Veit sit around a table going over the weekend’s plans.

It’s Friday, and the race starts tomorrow.

If Rapelje had a mayor, it would probably be 69-year-old Cork. Born just outside of town on his family’s farm, this lifetime Rapeljean and his tireless son Mike are the leading architects of the town’s revitalization efforts. It was Cork and

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THE FIRST-ANNUAL RAPELJE 100K, HELD ON OCTOBER 14 OF 2000, CONVERTED LOCAL SKEPTICS WHEN IT ATTRACTED 40 PAYING RIDERS AND ANOTHER TWO-DOZEN SPECTATORS.

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“THE ROADS ARE LIKE WIDE TRAILS REALLY. YOU CAN GO TWO HOURS AND ONLY SEE ONE PICKUP.”

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SCHOOL SPIRIT the Rapelje Rockets, is slowly shrinking, and residents fear the state may order it closed.

Cork hopes that if enough people see the area and the community’s character, some might stay. If the Stockman is this town’s heart, then the school is its soul. In the words of Mike Erfle, “You lose the school, you lose the town.”

Outside the Stockman, a couple from Billings—the nearest city at an hour’s drive southeast—pull up to pre-ride the course.

“We want to support what’s happening out here,” they say. “This is the kind of place cyclists like.” A land where the men wear nothing but Wranglers is about to be overrun

by Lycra, Oakleys and men with shaved legs.

It’s a delicious collision of New and Old West—and it might just keep this town alive.

R APELJE

IS DOMINATED BY FOUR

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■ Top: Cannon Man and Mike Erfle Bottom: Once the center of commerce, the town’s silos stand empty

LOOKING FOR COW PIES? For more information on Rapelje or the 24 Hours of Rapelje, call the Rapelje Community Development Organization: 406-663-2116. For information on biking in the area, call the Spoke Shop in Billings at: 406-656-8342.

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monolithic grain elevators that tower like watchful giants on the town’s eastern fringe.

It is in the grassy field at their base that the tents start sprouting Saturday morning. Van after car after camper rolls in, most with bikes on roof. Soon, a bustling mountainbike encampment is established. Across the street, cyclists filter into the Stockman and sign in at a registration table. The contrast of cultures is nowhere more apparent than in wardrobes. Odds are good on any other day you couldn’t pay a cyclist to saunter into a place named the Stockman Cafe in Montana in his Lycra, but here, women and men are casually strolling around with their packages on proud display.

A dozen or so townsfolk—curious housewives, ranchers and a gaggle of children— gather for the race’s start. A local man wheels out what he claims is the second-largest of his homemade canons. Bright jersey-clad riders line up in the street outside the Stockman for a LeMans-style start. All eyes focus on the racers as they lean forward. For a second everyone is still—a brief moment of silence where plans will finally come to fruition.

The cannon boom deafens anyone standing within 15 feet, a black lab jumps out of his skin and the racers burst forward into, well, a trot. Twenty-four-hour races, by their nature, sap the urgency from a LeMans start.

A quarter of a mile away, where the road turns to dirt, the racers mount their steeds, put foot to pedal and are off. The inaugural 24 Hours of Rapelje is underway.

Out on the range, racers soon discover that the basin, which looks flat from town, harbors rocky folds and ravines. Smooth doubletrack veers suddenly into rocky, dry

streambed crossings before undulating along the creases and swells. Off-camber singletrack unfurls along pine-studded ridges before pitching steeply down twisting, rocky descents and winding through a landscape of sagebrush, animal bones and stretches of slickrock-like limestone. The stark landscape reveals its past in the form of lonely windmills and century-old wagon paths. If they look closely, racers see the land that looks lifeless is alive with butterflies, bitterroot flowers, wheatgrass and fescue. Coyotes, mule deer and pronghorn antelope watch from the distance. The climbs are short but punishing. The views always vast. Wind is heard before it’s felt, huge and distant clouds drift overhead, and a bleached blue sky extends forever.

The nearest town, Columbus, is 30 miles south. In other directions, you can go much further before reaching a formal settlement.

The snowy peaks of the Beartooth and Crazy mountains hover on the southern and western horizons, but Rapelje is a land beyond the mountains: a squat, uneven landscape where the wind blows hard and winters rage with apocalyptic fury.

“The only thing we have here is space,” allows one resident. Add to that lots of littleused ranch tracks; ranch tracks that weave across ledgy rangeland, through sandstone canyons, down hidden ravines and along the dusty byways of a forgotten landscape.

According to one cyclist, “The roads are like wide trails really. You can go two hours and only see one pickup.”

Or, on this weekend, one of 58 mountain bikers with number plates on their handlebars. Most race entrants are on four- or fiveperson teams, with one rider from each team on the course at a time. The team with the most laps at the end of the race wins. As is standard at 24-hour races, however, the focus here seems less on competition than on having a good time, and a festival atmosphere pervades the camp area. Most people seem to be lifestyle-riders—goateed bike-shop workers, dedicated recreational riders in baggy shorts—rather than diehard racers. By contrast, the lean and muscled members of the Yellowstone Valley Cycling Club’s (YVCC) two teams huddle in yellow jerseys talking strategy under the check-in tent as they await their “tag.” Some sport two-way, headset radios.

Then, of course, there’s the solo class, comprised of those diehard, masochistic, endurance maniacs who insist on riding the whole 24 hours all by their bad selves. In this race there are three soloists. One such 107

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soul is Ed Newhall, a 40-ish auto mechanic, father of four and the only local in the race.

True to his Rapelje roots, Ed races in jeans.

Back at the Stockman and several hours into the afternoon, four tan-faced locals with big belt buckles gather at the tailgate of a dusty pickup to watch the proceedings. One of them turns to the others as a pair of riders blurs by and says, “We’ve more than doubled the size of this town in a weekend.”

A 60-something man sporting a brown cowboy hat, a toothpick between weathered lips and a tin of Copenhagen in his shirt pocket says, “I think they’re crazy, to tell you the truth.” Mike Erfle, eager to smooth over the blunt talk of his neighbor, jumps in, “But if they’re gonna be crazy, we want ’em to do it here.”

Cork chimes in with a sideways grin, “We’re crazy too; we’re farmers.” Everyone chuckles, except the toothpicked rancher who, still incredulous, shakes his head and says, “And they pay to ride out on this rough sonofabitch.”

Can this become a model for rural community development across the West?

Will other communities follow Rapelje’s example? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain, the people here, by opening their private land to mountain bikers, are unique in America. In a country where most people do everything they can to keep people off their private property, they’re turning convention on its head.

The question remains: Will it work? Can Rapelje save the Rockets? The reality is, despite Chris’ assertion that, “Places like Moab and Durango have nothing over Rapelje,” the riding isn’t great enough to draw large numbers of people from beyond the region—at least not yet. This weekend’s race attracts riders from across the state and northern Wyoming. Chris and the Erfle’s long-term vision is to bolster their services (guiding, lodging, more singletrack) and establish Rapelje as a legitimate mountainbike destination. At the very least, the town and events are unique enough to draw people solely for the experience.

As afternoon gives way to evening, large threatening clouds amass on the horizon.

The locals have been eyeing them all afternoon, assuring with an offhanded pessimism born of disappointment that they will amount to nothing. Meanwhile, immediately in front of the tent, a seven-year-old girl on a pink bike with a basket on the bars starts ripping huge, high-speed gravel skids.

The light fades from the sky and a long, dark-bottomed cloud looms to the west.

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SCHOOL SPIRIT (continued)

taped to the Stockman’s front door, “Church Service 10 a.m. (Spandex Welcome!). Come as you are! God doesn’t care and neither do we.” Inside the café, when asked if he still thinks it won’t rain, Mike replies that he’s not sure anymore, “I can smell it in the air now.” The racers on the course are unfazed, their headlights carving tunnels of light through the night’s blackness.

The clouds completely cover the stars, and racers, spouses and friends mill about the tent. Suddenly, at around 11 p.m., a furious pummeling of hail roars down from above. It’s the first precipitation in months and it comes with all the grace of a thousand enraged cherubs firing automatic weapons from the heavens. The thunderous drumming of hail on vinyl drowns out all attempts at conversation. People yell to those beside them. It continues for 15 minutes so fiercely that everyone is almost afraid of the violence the skies have unleashed—undeniably afraid for the riders still out on the course.

As soon as the barrage eases, Chris calls the race off until everyone can be accounted for. Mike motors off in his pickup to roundup the casualties. Chris fires up a four-wheeler to do the same. A few people mention the dreaded “H” word— hypothermia—and all attention turns to the riders out on the range.

Minutes later a biker comes flying in at mach speed and everyone under the tent cheers. “Wow, that’s some storm riding,” he says with wide eyes and starts frantically rubbing his legs, “Man, that burned.”

Mike returns with several riders in his pickup and women come out of the café bearing towels and offering sleeping bags and blankets and hot drinks inside. Ed pulls up with a skid, wearing only jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt, and says calmly, “Now that’s biking.”

While the rain and hail have stopped, everyone’s shaken and the water has turned the brown loamy soil into unrideable gumbo. There will be no racing until morning. Around 1 a.m. the last of the locals filter out of the Stockman, calling out to each other as they leave, “OK, spandex for church tomorrow. Everyone’s gotta wear spandex.”

C ORK

IS ALREADY SWEEPING THE

pavement in front of the café when the riders gather under the tent at sunrise.

Chris gives a quick pep talk and announces the race will still end at noon and that no laps from the previous night count unless riders came in under their own power. The solo rider battling it out with Ed for first 108

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place goes straight to the lap-count sheets.

“Did that guy come in under his own power last night?” he asks, seemingly annoyed (or is it disbelieving?) that he’s only one lap ahead of a guy in jeans and tennis shoes. In the meantime, Ed, wearing a flannel shirt and wool gloves, is pedaling out with the morning’s first riders.

By 11:28, under a hot sun, riders from teams nowhere near contention are still charging eagerly out on the 13-mile course for one more go around. There’s no better sign of a successful 24-hour race than riders chomping at the bit to do laps in the closing minutes.

WHILE THE RAIN AND HAIL HAVE STOPPED, EVERYONE’S SHAKEN AND THE WATER HAS TURNED THE BROWN LOAMY SOIL INTO UNRIDEABLE GUMBO. To no one’s surprise, a hard-charging team from the Yellowstone Valley Cycling Club takes first place with 19 laps. Ed is edged out for the solo title, 11 laps to 10.

But at race’s end, his victorious competition is slumped in a chair looking dazed and unresponsive while Ed moves benches and helps clean up the site as if it were a normal morning. On the street, kids pump their little knees around the block for the 24 Minutes of Rapelje youth race.

By 2 p.m., the mountain-bike encampment is empty. Volunteers sweep and mop inside the Stockman. Mike, Cork and Ed have finished taking down the tent. Other than the orange “Start” and “Finish” lines spray-painted on the street and a cracked reflector left from the post-race bike toss competition, there’s nothing to indicate the area was just overrun with a swarm of rubber and Lycra.

Tomorrow at the Stockman, ranchers will sip early-morning coffee, while others excitedly count the weekend’s profit, and life in Rapelje will return to its wideopen, ambling normalcy.

Except things are different here now.

Cars adorned with bikes roll in at random.

Topo maps of local rides are given away at the Stockman. The 24 Hours of Rapelje, possibly the most unlikely race in all of mountain biking, is on its way to becoming a permanent fixture in the hearts and calendars of riders across the region. The ranches may be dying and the land may be drying up, but people are finally coming back to Rapelje—and they’re bringing their mountain bikes. HOOKED w w w. r u h o o ke d . c o m

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